After the worst of Bush, Obama comes to a screaming halt

Paul Sheehan

Two weeks ago this column described George W. Bush as the most damaging US president of the past 100 years. This is on-going, because the Bush presidency has set the conditions for a dangerously ineffective presidency by President Barack Obama.

Last Monday, when the world was distracted by the violence in Ukraine, another regressive drift continued in world affairs. Monday was the latest deadline set for Iran to show meaningful concessions in halting its efforts to acquire nuclear weapons capacity.

These talks have been dragging on for eight years, since June, 2006. Eight years.That says a lot about Iran’s intentions. Last Monday’s deadline was pushed back to November 25. This gives the Iranian theocracy another five months to jaw-bone the issue while it works towards acquiring nuclear capacity, a goal from which it has never deviated.

The idea of nuclear weapons leaking into the growing blood-letting and religious war-making in this region is horrifying. The inertia of the US in the face of the problem, and the growth of Iranian influence in the region, is one of many problems of international consequence for Obama, most of which have their roots in Bush’s military adventurism in Iraq and Afghanistan, which did not remotely achieve their naive goals.

Obama’s unresolved problems are many. Here is a taste:

1. Iraq. The country has descended into chaos since Obama withdrew US forces. Swathes of Iraq are occupied by medievalist jihadis. The south of Iraq has become a client state of Iran. The US withdrawal was made with the support of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, a disastrous leader.

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2. Syria. On August, 20, 2012, Obama said: “We have been very clear to the Assad regime … that a red line for us is we start seeing … chemical weapons … We have communicated in no uncertain term with every player in the region that that’s a red line for us and there would be enormous consequences …” There have been no consequences, and half the country has fallen under the control of jihadists.

3. Iran. In September last year, Obama phoned Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani. It was the first such contact between the nations since Islamists seized power in Iran in 1979 and invaded the US embassy. Obama said he believed a settlement could be reached with Iran. Since then, Iran has used its proxies in Iraq, Lebanon and Syria to wage war against US interests.

4. Afghanistan. After Obama announced a deadline for the withdrawal of US forces by the end of this year, the Taliban has not even waited. It is already pushing to regain control of the country, which is becoming a failed state.

5. Libya. More chaos. This, too, happened on Obama’s watch after he gave support to the military overthrow of Muammar Gaddafi with no central authority to replace him. Libya has plunged into anarchy. Another failed state.

6. Benghazi. The Obama administration engaged in a sustained, credibility-damaging cover-up of events surrounding the murder of the US ambassador and three other US staff in Libya's second largest city Benghazi, on September 11, 2012. The attack was conducted by jihadists who timed their attack to commemorate the September 11 bombings in 2001.

7. Job insecurity. Anyone who spends time in the US finds the country has a chronic job insecurity problem. Policies put in place by Obama after the 2008 financial crisis, including his landmark Affordable Healthcare Act (Obamacare), have contributed to this insecurity while seeking to address other problems. One example, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, makes it easier for employers to lay off workers because it means they will not be liable for the former employee’s health coverage.

8. Deficits. Since Obama’s arrived in the White House US federal debt has exploded by 76 per cent to $US17.6 trillion ($18.7 trillion) in six years. This is even larger than the debt surge under George W. Bush, whose eight years in the White House saw federal debt increase 75 per cent. Bush was more irresponsible than Obama, driving holes in the budget with tax cuts and two wars, while Obama inherited the 2008 financial crisis.

This bad news is offset by a reduction in the federal deficit to 2.8 per cent of GDP, the lowest since 2007. By comparison, the projected federal budget deficit for Australia this financial year is higher, at 3 per cent. However, the Congressional Budget Office in Washington warns that, without structural change, the budget deficit will rise sharply as the baby boomer generation enters its peak retirement phase (the same problem facing Australia, hence the Hockey budget).

Lest anyone think I am being partisan about Obama, I welcomed his election and two weeks ago detailed why I thought Bush was the most damaging president of the past 100 years. Even in those two weeks, events in Iran, Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan and Libya have underlined this damage.

In the midst of the widening chaos in the Middle East, and the volatile events in Ukraine, the globalk sharemarkets have remained calm, even with disruption to the world’s oil supply and Russian President Vladimir Putin’s belligerence in Ukraine. What this calm is saying is that the markets are not expecting serious economic sanctions, or a serious military stand-off, in response to Putin’s meddling because western Europe needs Russian gas and oil.

A wider context is that the six years of Obama’s presidency has shown that, in the wake of Bush, the US no longer has the stomach to be the world’s policeman, for better or worse. We can only hope that Islamic fundamentalists do not acquire nuclear weapons as a result of Obama’s caution.